"Air Force" is becoming an increasingly inaccurate name for the flying branch of America's armed forces. Responsible for some but not all of its aerial machines, the Air Force is also in charge of domains beyond the reach of ocean-bound navies or ground-hugging armies; it wants to guarantee American military superiority in both cyberspace and actual space, and to that end, they're now letting a second venture carry their projects into the vacuum beyond our planet.

Previously, for an Air Force satellite to get into orbit it had be to carried by the Atlas V rockets of Lockheed Martin and Boeing's joint venture United Launch Alliance (ULA). But now Elon Musk's private spaceflight company SpaceX has just been approved to cart "national security payloads" into space. In order to be certified, SpaceX had to complete an elaborate two-year approval process. Here's how the Air Force describes the certification tests:

The Air Force invested more than $60 million and 150 people in the certification effort which encompassed 125 certification criteria, including more than 2,800 discrete tasks, 3 certification flight demonstrations, verifying 160 payload interface requirements, 21 major subsystem reviews and 700 audits in order to establish the technical baseline from which the Air Force will make future flight worthiness determinations for launch.

Geopolitics may have also factored into the success of SpaceX's bid. ULA's Atlas V rockets repurpose old Russian rocket engines for space delivery, but with geopolitical tensions high between Russia and the West, having a second option for space delivery that's not contingent on Russian good will holds appeal.